A Theory of Personality Change

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Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D.
* O9 ?! F+ S9 }) X. j* }University of Chicago
8 Z! m  Y. t: TChapter four in: Personality Change,; E3 J9 M  y. g; W" T+ Q
Philip Worchel & Donn Byrne (Eds.), New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1964
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I am grateful to Malcolm A. Brown for many helpful and clarifying discussions, which greatly aided the process of writing this chapter, and to Dr. Sidney M. Jourard, Marilyn Geist, Dr. William Wharton, Joe T. Hart, David Le Roy, and Ruth Nielsenn for their valuable comments and editorial help.

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* P+ }2 L' G4 W# \$ @INTRODUCTION
, \7 F; k$ Z+ p* F2 y* e, _PROBLEMS AND OBSERVATIONS7 u, P$ ]7 g5 |5 S1 c% H& d7 N  B

Personality Theory and Personality Change
: _1 X2 m& E, c- t/ j/ aTwo Problems
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• The "Repression Paradigm"
• The "Content Paradigm"

Two Universal Observations of Personality Change! [5 }- _9 O6 K/ u2 ~! c, j

• The Feeling Process
• The Personal Relationship

THE THEORY  G" v3 C6 u7 T0 n' T6 }' K

Basic Concepts - What are Psychological Events?
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1. Experiencing; y$ R) P% v& }+ e7 X
2. The Direct Referent" U6 }; i6 o! v, j
3. Implicit, a/ R6 ]" B  C' Q$ T+ G
4. Implicit Function (in Perception and Behavior)
, _5 f1 h6 q; x3 Y& A3 }5. Completion; Carrying Forward
) ~) W5 n) \% K% g2 n6. Interaction
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The Feeling Process - How Change Takes Place in the Individual
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7. Focusing6 V) Z% n; d8 M1 P
8. Direct Reference in Psychotherapy (Phase One of Focusing); X$ I' _( K7 y: d7 E. x, k9 H6 U
9. Unfolding (Phase Two of Focusing)3 Q+ v3 m6 o: c$ W2 N0 I+ I. F
10. Global Application (Phase Three of Focusing)
, H" A$ p4 E! }! A  Z8 p11. Referent Movement (Phase Four of Focusing)' @" @8 Y! E8 Y! d
12. The Self-Propelled Feeling Process
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The Role of the Personal Relationship - How Another Person's Responses Affect the Individual's Experiencing, and How Personality "Contents" Are Inherently Changeable Thereby6 Q; i9 \, i1 ?/ R  ~

13. Manner of Experiencing1 j3 O  W( S. \) G1 S4 D% u

• Immediacy of Experiencing
• Presentness
• Richness of Fresh Detail
• Frozen Wholes
• Repetitive versus Modifiable
• Optimal Implicit Functioning

14. In Process versus Structure-Bound
9 J5 L% T% y- p6 H15. Reconstituting1 G- ~* m8 ]. L/ l& O* [
16. Contents Are Process Aspects$ K$ F7 b( I$ F' J) L' R* g& O2 F
17. The Law of Reconstitution of the Experiencing Process
. Z* `. {: a  T4 B% ]. w18. Hierarchy of Process Aspects
0 y$ S6 o5 {  v9 h5 T19. Self-Process! x+ C& d! j- L' L5 \3 p$ K
20. The Reconstituting Response is Implicitly Indicated9 n% J' L. z/ r% o2 z+ ^
21. Primacy of Process
" W0 x- d; ~' E0 D  k  k  R22. Process Unity
7 `1 E4 p( I6 U23. The Self Process and Its Interpersonal Continuity5 s$ }/ A  o5 z4 o. A! J% ]  T

Repression and Content Definitions Reformulated1 |9 v/ ]. {4 a( x

24. The Unconscious As Incomplete Process
# \8 o1 o, a" Y25. Extreme Structure-Bound Manner of Experiencing (Psychosis, Dreams, Hypnosis, CO2, LSD, Stimulus Deprivation)
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• Structures are Perceived as Such
• Extreme Structure-Bound Manner Occurs Whenever the Interactive Process is Greatly Curtailed
• Lack of Implicit Function
• "Loss of Self"
• Static, Repetitious, Unmodifiable Manner
• The Universality of Psychotic "Contents"
• Psychotic Experiences Are Not "the Repressed"

26. Content Mutation/ u) x4 Y- w! d* j

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After a few pages which state two main problems and two observations, a theory of personality change will be presented. The theory is another step in the continuing work on "experiencing" (Gendlin, 1957, 1962b; Gendlin and Zimring, 1955). The theory of experiencing provides a frame of reference in which theoretical considerations are viewed in a new way.
( C( `* N( i/ W5 o" BA theory requires terms, defined words with which to specify observations, and a formulation of a chain of theoretical hypotheses. The theory presented here is developed within this basic structure, and special notice should be given to the new terms which are introduced and defined. These terms are pointed out and numbered. (We can have a genuine theory only with carefully defined terms, and only by using defined terms can we later modify, improve, and extend theory.)$ H5 r/ v. H/ _& |" N  T
PROBLEMS AND OBSERVATIONSIn most theories, the static content-and-structure aspects of personality are primary, and therefore personality change is an especially difficult problem. The present theoretical frame of reference is especially suited to account for change, since it employs concepts that apply to the experiencing process, and to the relationships between that process and content aspects of personality.: i, e! d6 ~' A; D6 n
1 T9 Z$ [; r( S3 \
Personality Theory and Personality ChangePersonality theories have chiefly been concerned with the factors that determine and explain different individuals' personalities as they are, and the factors which have brought about the given personality. What is called personality maintains its character despite circumstances. Aspects of an individual fail to puzzle us if his current situation explains them. We do not even attribute it to his personality when an individual shows all sorts of undesirable behavior under overwhelmingly bad circumstances, or when he becomes likable and secure under the influence of events which (as we say) would make almost anybody likable and secure. What we do attribute to personality is the reverse: when an individual remains likable and secure under overwhelmingly bad circumstances, and when an individual remains afraid and in pain despite apparent opportunities and good luck. Thus, it could be said that, far from explaining personality change, our theories have been endeavoring to explain and define personality as that which tends not to change when one would expect change.
  Y2 v2 R1 a, c5 ^6 f# ZTo some extent this view of personality as factors which resist change is justified. We usually think of a person as involving identity and continuity through time. However, the contents and patterns in the theories are a type of explanatory concept which renders change impossible by definition. The structure of personality (in theories) is formulated in such a way that it is said to maintain itself against all new experience which might alter it. The individual is viewed as a structured entity with defined contents. These explanatory concepts can explain only why an individual cannot change.) ~+ \0 g6 J# |
Personality theory, then, has concentrated upon the factors which explain why an individual is as he is, how he has become so, and how these factors maintain him so, despite circumstances, fortunes, and opportunities. Such explanatory concepts of content and structure tell us what prevents an individual from being changed by experience, what factors will force him forever (by dennition) to miss or distort everything that might change him unless (as we commonly say) his personality (somehow) changes first.% |6 U5 v* X1 M4 g+ o' J: O
Since structure and content do tend to maintain themselves and distort present experience, we can account for personality change only if we can show exactly how this change resistance yields to change.
( R) s8 @% T1 r" ?; {Theories in the past have not wanted to portray personality change as impossible. On the contrary, the theories assert that change does actually occur. The chief personality theories have sprung from psychotherapy--that is to say (when psychotherapy is successful), from ongoing personality change.
1 {4 f2 z4 E" l' rQuite paradoxically, as personality change occurs before their eyes and with their participation, therapists find their minds formulating what has been wrong. Even the individual, himself, as he searches into his feelings and expresses these, speaks as if the whole endeavor were to investigate what has been wrong--what has constituted the aspects of his personality which have prevented ordinary adaption and change. And, usually, such an individual becomes aware of much which, he then says, has been true all along but of which he has not been aware.
0 y; z5 S' }5 b8 \& `' ~+ G& TThus, psychotherapy regularly gives us this observation of an individual "uncovering" or "becoming aware" of these stubborn contents and his previous inability to be aware of them. So well have the various personality theories formulated these contents and this self maintaining and **ing structure that, while we have concepts to explain what makes an individual as he is, we cannot formulate how he can change. Yet all the time the individual has been changing just these "uncovered" factors which we formulate in terms of static explanatory contents.[1]
; D* K0 [# {7 t8 G' g$ oI will now present in more detail the two main ways in which much current formulation of personality makes change appear theoretically impossible. I call these two impossibilities "the repression paradigm," and "the content paradigm."[2]: T: ]. H5 s' L: n8 P9 q" W
Since these theories, nevertheless, also assert that change does occur, I will then take up the two main ways in which theories attempt to account for change. I will try to show that theories usually cite two observations: a feeling process; and a certain personal relationship." ~  P. e1 Y$ Z8 l

1 ~$ v4 B4 t  Q' ^Two ProblemsTHE "REPRESSION PARADIGM."Most personality theories (in different words and with somewhat different meanings) share what I call the "repression paradigm." They agree that in an individual's early family relations he introjected certain values, according to which he was loved only if he felt and behaved in certain ways. Experiences which contradicted these demands on him came to be "repressed" (Freud), or "denied to awareness" (Rogers), or "not me" (Sullivan). Later, when the individual encounters experiences of this contradicting sort, he must either distort them or remain totally unaware of them. For, were he to notice the contradictory experiences, he would become intolerably anxious. The ego (Freud), or self-concept (Rogers), or self-dynamism (Sullivan), thus basically influences awareness and perception. This influence is termed "resistance" (Freud), or "defensiveness" (Rogers), or "security O p e r ation" (Sullivan), and a great deal of behavior is thereby explainable. A personality is as it is, and remains as it is, because it cannot take account of these experiences. Or if, somehow, repression is forcefully lifted and the individual is made to become aware of these experiences, the ego will "lose control," the self will "disintegrate," and intolerable "uncanny emotions" will occur. In psychosis, it is said, the individual is aware of such experiences and the ego or self-organization has indeed broken down.# K! W- O. R% }7 Z0 x
If the individual needed merely to be reminded, or to have the "repressed" factors called to his notice, he would soon be straightened out. There are always helpful or angry people who attempt this, and many situations grossly demand attention to these factors. The individual, however, represses not only the given factors within him but also anything outside him which would relate to these factors and remind him of them.[3] He misunderstands or reinterprets so as to prevent himself from noticing the aspects of events and persons which would bring these factors to his awareness.& F! @* e  E' w2 S- b  d3 Q2 I$ n
Thus, the specific personality structure maintains itself and change is theoretically impossible. Whatever would change the individual in the necessary respects is distorted or goes unnoticed just to that extent and in those respects in which it could lift the repression and change him.2 H$ x  M: ]4 K1 N% |
Now, this explanation (shared in some way, as I have tried to indicate, by the major personality theories of the day [4]) is based on the striking way in which the individual during psychotherapy becomes aware of what (so he now says) he has long felt but has not known that he felt. Moreover, the individual realizes how powerfully these previously unaware experiences have affected his feelings and behavior. So many individuals have now reported this that there is no longer much doubt that it is a valid observation. The open question is how we are to formulate it theoretically.
/ k2 b7 {' |+ ^7 u6 q1 \( Q) TOnce we formulate theory along the lines of the repression paradigm, we cannot then blithely turn around and "explain" personality change as a "becoming aware" of the previously repressed. Once we have shown how anything will be distorted which tends to bring these experiences to awareness, we cannot then consider it an explanation to simply assert that personality change is (by definition supposedly impossible) a becoming aware. Change happens. But, to say that is not to offer an explanation-it is only to state the problem. We may take the "repression paradigm" to be one basic aspect of personality change-one of the two basic factors with which this chapter will be concerned. To account for personality change, we will have to account for how this crucial becoming aware really does occur, and then we will have to go back and reformulate our theory of repression and the unconscious.

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THE "CONTENT PARADIGM."The second basic aspect of personality change (and the second way in which current modes of formulating make change theoretically impossible) concerns the view of personality as made up of various "contents." By "contents" I mean any defined entities, whether they are called "experiences," "factors," "S-R bonds," "needs," "drives," "motives," "appraisals," "traits," "self-concepts," "anxieties," "motivational systems," "infantile fixations," "developmental failures," or whatever.+ f( F$ \& E" j# r0 S. J  ~
If we are to understand personality change, we must understand how these personality constituents can change in nature.
: @" n5 {' A: J2 S" ]7 M& d8 kTo account for this change in the nature of contents, we need a type of definition (explanatory constructs) which also can change. We cannot explain change in the nature of the content when our theory specifically defines personality only as content. Such theory can formulate what needs to be changed, and later it can also formulate what has changed, and into what it has changed; but it will remain theoretically unexplained how such change is possible, so long as all our explanations are in terms of concepts of this or that defined content.
' Q8 q- u  j$ r: T# n8 |6 v6 ?We require some kind of more basic personality variable to formulate an account of how, under what conditions, and through what process, change in the nature of contents can occur.4 z. m) K2 h" B3 b4 y/ H
Thus, for example, chemistry defines the elements in terms of more basic activities of electrons and protons, and thereby we can account for the subatomic processes by which elements engage in chemical change reactions, and through which an element can be bombarded with subatomic particles and turned into a different element. Without these concepts, which view elements as motions of something more basic, we could not explain the chemical and atomic change we observe, nor O p e r ationally study and define the conditions under which it occurs. We could state only that at t1 the test tube had certain contents A, B, while at t2 the contents were C, D. Only if A, B, C, D, are not themselves the ultimate explanatory concepts can we expect to explain changes from one to another. And so it is with personality change. If our ultimate explanatory constructs are "contents;" we cannot explain the change in the nature of just these contents.3 I5 q! e0 D$ @4 ?: i# c6 ?( z; k
Our conclusion here is not simply that defined contents of personality do not exist. Rather, it is that if we define personality as contents and in no further, more basic way, then we cannot expect to use the same concepts to explain just how these contents change. And, inasmuch as it will have been just these contents which define the personality (and the respects in which change must occur if it is to be important personality change), exactly this theoretically impossible task is posed when personality theories come to explain change.
# _, J; C3 M1 p* w) ]For example, during psychotherapy the patient finally comes to realize these essential contents (they will be conceptualized in whatever the vocabulary of the particular theory the psychotherapist uses). He realizes now that he has been full of "hostility," or that he has felt and acted from "partial, fixated s-e-xual desires;" or that he "hates his father," or that he is "passive-dependent," or was "never loved as a child." "Now what?;" he asks. How do you change such contents? No way is given. The fact that these contents actually do change is our good fortune. The theories explain the personality in terns of these defined contents, these "experiences," or "needs," or "lacks." The theories cannot explain how these contents melt and lose their character to become something of a different character. Yet they do.
8 g" q* x( O9 [1 Z! tOur second basic problem of personality change, then, is this "content paradigm." The question is, "In what way should the nature of personality definitions change so that we can arrive at a means of defining that will fit the process of change in personality contents?" In answering this, we will describe something more basic or ultimate than defined contents. Then we will consider how defined contents arise in this more ultimate personality process.
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Two Universal Observations of Personality ChangeNow that two basic problems of personality change have been stated (becoming aware and change in the nature of contents), we will turn next to two basic observations of personality change. In contrast to the aforementioned theoretical impossibilities, most theories of personality cite two observations, which they assert are nearly always involved in personality change.
8 m' U1 D1 }) Q" P1. Major personality change involves some sort of intense affective or feeling process occurring in the individual.4 w/ A% w7 @2 v$ E
2. Major personality change occurs nearly always in the context of an ongoing personal relationship.
. f) }# s9 {! hTHE FEELING PROCESS.When major personality change occurs, intense, emotional, inwardly felt events are usually observed. I would like to give the name "feeling process" to this affective dimension of personality change. The word "feeling" is preferable to "affective," because "feeling" usually refers to something concretely sensed by an individual. In personality change the individual directly feels an inward reworking. His own concepts and constructs become partly unstructured and his felt experiencing at times exceeds his intellectual grasp.$ g& J6 Q2 I5 p% c- X- L
In various contexts it has been noted that major personality change requires not only intellectual or actional O p e r ations, but also this felt process. For instance, psychotherapists (of whatever orientation) often discuss the presence or absence of this feeling process in a particular case. They discuss whether the individual, in a given psychotherapy hour, is engaged in "merely" intellectualizing, or whether (as they phrase it) he is "really" engaged in psychotherapy. The former they consider a waste of time or a defense, and they predict[5] that no major personality change will result from it. The latter they consider promising of personality change./ W  ]* {$ G# k  h9 a
Now, although this difference is universally discussed, it is most often phrased so unclearly, and the words following "merely" ("merely" intellectualizing, defending, avoiding, externalizing, etc.), and the words following "really" ("really" engaged, facing, dealing with) are so undefined that we may as well simply refer to this difference as the difference between "merely" and "really." Although it may not be phrased well, what is always meant of referred to by "really" is a feeling process which is absent when something is termed "merely."
, o* ~& B* A8 ^& A8 {# r0 g6 C1 DA similar distinction between "merely" and "really" is talked about in education: There has always been much concern with the contrast between "mere" rote learnings of facts and "really" learning something (mak-ing it one's own, becoming able to "integrate," "apply," and "creatively elaborate" it).
% `: P) R/ j2 Y; k3 `: h" Y5 D"Really" learning is predicted to result in observable behavior changes, while "mere" rote learning is predicted to result in little (or different) behavior change. The learning process is said to differ in the two instances, depending upon the degree of the individual's "internal motivation," his way of "taking the new material in," his "application of himself to what he learns," his genuine grasp of meanings. These metaphoric phrases indicate that, here again during learning, the difference between "really" and "merely" refers to a certain participation of the individual's feelings in the learning process.2 Z9 Y5 h2 r0 |% L9 W6 q% |
Let me give some further aspects of this observation from psychotherapy.
$ n+ k) F8 v7 T, G0 ]' _An Adlerian therapist some years ago told me: "Of course interpretation is not enough. Of course the person doesn't change only because of the wisdoms which the therapist tells him. But no technique really expresses what makes the change itself. The change comes through some kind of emotional digesting; but then you must admit that none of us understand what that is."
. q) H' h. o1 `, {! QTherapists often miss this fact. They labor' at helping the individual to a better explanation of what is wrong with him, yet, when asked how the individual is to change this now clearly explained maladaption, nothing very clear is said. Somehow, knowing his problem, the individual should change, yet knowing is not the process of changing.
9 P; i% h& K) W4 P! K/ Z. \A good diagnostician, perhaps with the aid of a few psychometric tests, can often give a very accurate and detailed description and explanation of an individual's personality. Therapist and client often both know, after such testing and a few interviews, a good deal of what is wrong and what needs to be changed. Quite often, after two years of therapeutic interviews, the description and explanation which was (or could have been) given at the outset appears in retrospect to have been quite accurate. Yet it is clear that there is a major difference between knowing the conceptual explanation of personality (which one can devise in a few hours) and the actual feeling process of changing (which often requires years). Relatively little has been said about this process,[6] how one may observe and measure it, and just in what theoretical way this feeling process functions to permit personality change.

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THE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP.Just as the feeling process is observed as essential in personality change-while little is said to delineate, observably define, or theoretically account for it-so also the personal relationship is always cited. Can theory define this enormous and critical difference which it makes to the individual to live in relation to another person?. D# x, |& a) d
We observe that when the individual thinks about his experiences and emotions by himself, there is often little change. We observe that when he speaks about these things to some other people, equally little change occurs.: l. L- e6 W2 m: ^  ~2 o/ p
However, when we come to the "therapeutic" or "effective" personal relationship, we say that "suggestion," or "libidinal support," or "approval and reinforcement," or the other person's "therapeutic attitudes," or the "conversation between the two unconsciousnesses," somehow obviates the factors which otherwise shape all his experiences and personal relations to keep the individual as he is. Somehow, now, he is said to "become aware" of what he previously could not be aware of, he is "influenced" by suggestions, he "overcomes" the transference, his "libidinal balance" is altered, he somehow now "perceives the attitudes" of the therapist, where he has always distorted and anticipated the attitudes of others. This is really the problem, not the explanation, of personality change.
$ ~4 e: X. C) G' [  x. lBut we do observe that almost always these changes occur in the context of a personal relationship. Some definitions of the kind of relationship which does (and the kind which does not) effect personality change have been offered (Rogers, 1957, 1959b). Very little has been said about how relationship events affect the conditions mak-ing for repression and the nature of contents, so that these alter.
" l4 Y. H# f% xSo far we have formulated two problems of personality change and we have then cited two observations; the feeling process in the individual; and the personal relationship.* b$ q/ o% d$ `
Our two observations and our two problems are related: simply, we may say that, while it is theoretically impossible for the individual to become aware of what he must repress and to change his personality contents into other contents, we observe that both occur when the individual is engaged in a deep and intense feeling process and in the context of a personal relationship. We need a theoretical account of this observed possibility, and we need to reformulate the theory of repression and the definitions of personality constituents, so that observed changes can be theoretically formulated.
; d3 ^" v; K3 k! ETHE THEORYBasic Concepts-What Are Psychological Events?1. EXPERIENCING.(a) The "ing" in the term "experiencing" indicates that experience is considered as a process. (We will have to define the theoretical conceptions which go to make up a process framework.)
) g# J1 s6 g7 R$ j8 @5 FNow, of course, the above is not really a definition, since the usage of the word "experience" is currently confused and various. The field of psychology lacks a theory of experience. However, the theory of experiencing (Gendlin, 1962b) attempts to provide a process for determining a theory of experience.
: y' N" M( Y1 ]# b; B  XSince the term "experiencing" is extremely broad, more specific terms will be defined for specific aspects of experiencing. Anything in particular which we may consider will be a particular manner or mode of experiencing, or a particular function of it, or a particular logical pattern we choose to impose. The term "experiencing," then, denotes all "experience" viewed in terms of the process framework./ L* d& J. B9 ?, F, N1 e
(b) The word "experience" in psychology, wherever employed, means concrete psychological events. The same is the case here. Experiencing is a process of concrete, ongoing events.
% p! T7 h+ Y4 k( x(c) Finally, by experiencing we mean a felt process. We mean inwardly sensed, bodily felt events, and we hold that the concrete "stuff" of personality or of psychological events is this flow of bodily sensing or feeling.* v# _8 s1 K1 {. c* h0 j( B$ ^
Experiencing is the process of concrete, bodily feeling, which constitutes the basic matter of psychological and personality phenomena.( u' x+ M  _, Q) G5 x
2. THE DIRECT REFERENT.Both in social talk and in theory we so largely emphasize external events and logical meaning that it almost seems as if it were difficult to notice that, in addition to external objects and logic, we also have an inward bodily feeling or sensing. This is, of course, a commonplace that can be readily checked by anyone.+ O' q: E! X0 }( {8 {5 t- P* q) n
At any moment he wishes, one can refer directly to an inwardly felt datum. Experiencing, in the mode of being directly referred to in this way, I term the "direct referent."
1 y" o2 Q, y/ A# z; j( `3 v" @# t- uOf course, there are other modes of experiencing. Situations and external events, symbols, and actions may interact with our feeling process quite without any reflexive attention paid to the direct referent. We are aware and feel without this direct attention as well as with it.
! g3 X* R8 m6 FOne can always refer directly to experiencing.

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3. IMPLICIT.It is less apparent, but still easily checked by anyone, that this direct referent contains meaning. At first it may seem that experiencing is simply the inward sense of our body, its tension, or its well-being. Yet, upon further reflection, we can notice that only in this direct sensing do we have the meanings of what we say and think. For, without our "feel" of the meaning, verbal symbols are only noises (or sound images of noises).
# Z5 ?( O" j, F! `6 E6 _For example, someone listens to you speak, and then says: "Pardon me, but I don't grasp what you mean." If you would like to restate what you meant in different words, you will notice that you must inwardly attend to your direct referent, your felt meaning. Only in this way can you arrive at different words with which to restate it.
; c/ h- W5 {7 q5 ]In fact, we employ explicit symbols only for very small portions of what we think. We have most of it in the form of felt meanings.
( ?5 B% v! K$ B1 v1 K& `For example, when we think about a problem, we must think about quite a number of considerations together. We cannot do so verbally. In fact, we could not think about the meaning of these considerations at all if we had to keep reviewing the verbal symbols over and over. We may review them verbally. However, to think upon the problem we must use the felt meanings--we must think of how "this" (which we previously verbalized) relates to "that" (which we also previously verbalized). To think "this" and "that," we employ their felt meanings.
# O# ]2 n! ?8 XWhen felt meanings occur in interaction with verbal symbols and we feel what the symbols mean, we term such meanings "explicit" or "explicitly known." On the other hand, quite often we have just such felt meanings without a verbal symbolization. Instead we have an event, a perception, or some word such as the word "this" (which represents nothing, but only points). When this is the case, we can term the meaning "implicit" or "implicitly felt, but not explicitly known."3 A8 u* j/ C$ ^7 N
Please note that "explicit" and "implicit" meanings are both in aware-ness. What we concretely feel and calf inwardly refer to is certainly "in awareness" (though the term "awareness" will later require some reformulations). "Implicit" meaning is often confusingly discussed as if it were "unconscious" or "not in awareness." It should be quite clear that, since the direct referent is felt and is a direct datum of attention, it is "in awareness." Anything termed "implicit" is felt in awareness., _" B* d" \) V) l
Furthermore, we may now add that even when a meaning is explicit (when we say "exactly what we mean") the felt meaning we have always contains a great deal more implicit meaning than we have made explicit. When we define the words we have just used, or when we "elaborate" what we( Q& R; a, ~) N, ^- u; @8 C
"meant," we notice that the felt meanings we have been employing always contain implicitly many, many meanings-always many more than those to which we gave explicit formulation. We find that we employed these mean-ings. We find they were central to what we did make explicit, that they made up what we actually meant, yet they were only felt. They were implicit.! v/ i9 z1 |. P$ U  w
4. IMPLICIT FUNCTION (IN PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR).So far we have thought of implicit meanings as existing only in the direct referent; that is to say, only if and when we directly refer to our experiencing as a felt datum. However, quite without such direct reference to experiencing, most of life and behavior proceed on implicit meanings. (Explicit meanings serve only a few special purposes.) We say, for example, that our interpretation of and reactions to present situations are determined by our "past" experiences. But in which way are our past experiences here now? For instance, if I am to observe an immediate situation and then describe it, in what way are there present my knowledge and experiences of past events, my knowledge of language, and my memories of this situation which I have just observed so that they function now? To describe the situation I just observed, my words will arise for me from a felt sense of what I have observed, reacted to, and now mean to say. Rarely, if at all, do I think in words what I now observe. Nor do I think each of the past experiences which function in this observing. Rarely do I think in explicit words what I will say. All these meanings function implicitly as my present, concretely felt experiencing.* R# ]+ p9 q* Y5 l1 O7 T3 i" X* M
5. COMPLETION; CARRYING FORWARD6. INTERACTION.Implicit meanings are incomplete. Symbolic completion--or carrying forward--is a bodily felt process. There is an interacting, not an equation, between implicit meaning and symbols." p/ o3 E4 s4 F- T/ M
I must now make it quite clear that "implicit" and "explicit" meanings are different in nature. We may feel that some verbal statement says exactly what we mean; nevertheless, to feel the meaning is not the same kind of thing as verbal symbols. As we have shown, a felt meaning can contain very many meanings and can be further and further elaborated. Thus, the felt meaning is not the same in kind as the precise symbolized explicit meaning. The reason the difference in kind is so important is because if we ignore it we assume that explicit meanings are (or were) already in the implicit felt meaning. We are led to make the felt, implicit meaning a kind of dark place in which countless explicit meanings are hidden. We then wrongly assume that these meanings are "implicit" and felt only in that they are "hidden." I must emphasize that the "implicit" or "felt" datum of experiencing is a sensing of body life. As such it may have countless organized aspects, but this does not mean that they are conceptually formed, explicit, and hidden. Rather, we complete and form them when we explicate. Before symbolization, the "felt" meanings are incomplete. They are analogous, let us say, to the muscle movement in my stomach which I can call "hunger." This sensation certainly "means" something about eating, but it does not "contain" eating. To be even more graphic, the feeling of hunger .is not a repressed eating. It does not contain within itself the search for an animal, the killing and roasting of this animal, the eating, digesting, and absorbing of food particles, and the excretion and burying of wastes. Now just as all these steps (some of them patterned in the newborn organism, some of them learned) do not exist within the hunger sensation of muscle movement, so also the symbolic meaning "hunger" does not exist within it. Symbols must interact with the feeling before we have a meaning. The verbal symbol "hunger," just as "food," must interact with it before we carry forward the digestive process. The symbol "hunger," like other aspects of the search for food or my sitting down at a table, is a learned step of the digestive process and carries that process forward. Before that occurs, the feeling of the muscle movement implicitly contains the body's patterned readiness for organized interaction but not the formed conceptual units. Implicit bodily feeling is preconceptual. Only when interaction with verbal symbols (or events) actually occurs, is the process actually carried forward and the explicit meaning formed.[7] So long as it is implicit, it is incomplete, awaiting symbols (or events) with which it can interact in preorganized ways.* E6 E8 N& Q; F2 O9 l  v
Thus, to explicate is to carry forward a bodily felt process. Implicit meanings are incomplete. They are not hidden conceptual units. They are not the same in nature as explicitly known meanings. There is no equation possible between implicit meanings and "their" explicit symbolization. Rather than an equation, there is an interaction between felt experiencing and symbols (or events).[8]
4 k8 }4 @) S& D. U+ j9 S
- g6 c$ l( w4 r+ Q- G1 rThe Feeling Process-How Change Takes Place in the Individual7. FOCUSING."Focusing" (or, more exactly, "continuous focusing") will be defined in terms of four more specific definitions (8-11) below. "Focusing" is the whole process which ensues when the individual attends to the direct referent of experiencing., H& _9 [$ o! q
We noted earlier that direct reference is one mode of experiencing. The feeling process we term "experiencing" also occurs in an individual's awareness without direct reference to it as a felt datum. In these other modes, also, experiencing has important functions in personality change. We will discuss them later.
6 N; v" B5 y6 j, ~- Y1 L& l2 E"Focusing" refers to how one mode of experiencing, the direct referent, functions in ongoing personality change.
% ?! k( L% d" ~' g0 `The foregoing definitions (I-6) will be employed in the following discussion, and four more definitions concerning focusing will be formulated.
0 c* g6 ?" \* e' \7 W( VFocusing will be analyzed in four phases. The division into these phases is more a result of my way of formulation than of any inherent four-step divisibility in the process. Although it may occur in these clearly separable phases, more often it does not.

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8. DIRECT REFERENCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY (PHASE ONE OF FOCUSING).A definitely felt, but conceptually vague referent is directly referred to by the individual. Let us say he has been discussing some troublesome situation or personal trait. He has described various events, emotions, opinions, and interpretations. Perhaps he has called himself "foolish," "unrealistic," and assured his listener that he really "knows better" than to react in the way he does. He is puzzled by his own reactions, and he disapproves of them. Or, what amounts to the same thing, he strongly defends his reactions against some real or imaginary critic who would say that the reactions make no sense, are self-defeating, unrealistic, and foolish. If he is understandingly listened to and responded to, he may be able to refer directly to the felt meaning which the matter has for him. He may then lay aside, for a moment, all his better judgment or bad feeling about the fact that he is as he is, and he may refer directly to the felt meaning of what he is talking about. He may then say something like: "Well, I know it makes no sense, but in some way it does." Or: "It's awfully vague to me what this is with me, but I feel it pretty definitely." It may seem as if language and logic are insufficient, but the trouble is merely that we are not used to talking about something which is conceptually vague, but definitely and distinctly felt.
4 l% r- n/ w7 w& LIf the individual continues to focus his attention on this direct referent (if he does not break off attending to it because it seems too foolish, or too bad, or too doubtful whether he isn't just coddling himself, etc.), he may become able to conceptualize some rough aspects of it. For example, he may find: "I feel that way whenever anyone does such-and-such to me." Or: "I think there is something about that kind of thing which could make something completely terrible and frightening happen to me, but that's silly. You have to accept things like that. That's life. But that's the way it feels, kind of a terror."
. B5 t- i6 @6 t  D9 }: }Having conceptualized some such rough aspect of "it," the individual usually feels the felt meaning more strongly and vividly, becomes more excited and hopeful about the process of focusing within himself, and is less likely now to settle for the conceptual explanations, accusations, and apologies. It is a profound discovery for most people when they find it possible to continue direct reference. It comes to be deeply valued as "I am in touch with myself."/ [3 b2 z- G7 w1 M5 ^
As the individual continues to focus on such a direct referent, he may puzzle over what a funny kind of a "this" he is talking about. He may call it "this feeling," or "this whole thing," or "this is the way I am when such-and-such occurs." Very clearly it is an inwardly sensed referent in his present experiencing. Nothing is vague about the definite way he feels it. He can turn to it with his inward attention. Only conceptually is it vague.
3 U; \! Z7 s3 p' I' m2 gA very important and surprising fact about direct reference to felt meanings is that if the matter under consideration is anxiety producing or highly uncomfortable, this felt discomfort decreases as the individual directly refers to the felt meaning. One would have expected the opposite. Certainly the opposite is true, for example, when the individual chooses between various topics for discussion. The prospect of talking about this difficult, anxiety-provoking matter certainly makes the person more anxious than the prospect of talking about some neutral or pleasant subject. Thus, he may be in quite a lot of inward pain as he decides to bring the matter up at all. However, once into the topic, the more directly he attends to the direct referent, the felt meaning, the less his discomfort and anxiety. If he momentarily loses track of it, the anxiety flares up again, and the diffuse discomfort of the topic returns.' U* n! o/ M) x1 W( `" ]' B
As the individual symbolizes some aspect of the felt meaning, he senses its rightness partly by the degree of easing of the anxiety which he feels.
/ B1 L8 u0 K) \) _! SIn contrast to the anxiety or discomfort, the felt meaning itself becomes sharper, more distinctly felt, as he refers to and correctly symbolizes what it is. In fact, his sense of whether or not he has "correctly" symbolized is partly just this sense of increased intensity of the felt meaning.[9]1 C  A9 K+ K1 F2 r0 c$ a
This decreased anxiety is a very surprising fact, much against the general assumptions about anxiety-provoking material. We generally assume that to focus directly on the experiencing makes us more anxious. My observations indicate that increased anxiety comes from topic choice, and it is this which we generally expect. On the other hand, given the topic, the more we focus directly upon the felt meaning, and the more of it we symbolize correctly, the more relief we feel. Even a little error in symbolizing ("no, what I just said isn't quite it") again increases the anxiety.7 g' `5 ~0 h" t8 W
We may theoretically interpret this observation in terms of definitions 5 and 6 and our use of the work of Mead and Sullivan. To symbolize a directly felt implicit meaning carries the organismic process a step forward. It is felt so. It also appears from this that we should consider the direct
3 \6 Z6 V- R  _9 creference (or the giving of attention), as itself, already a kind of symbolizing. Direct reference, as well as the resulting symbolizations, involves bodily felt tension relief.[10]
5 h; c: _0 Y. z. u/ H4 PThere are other ways of describing the individual's focusing on a direct referent of experiencing. We may say that, at such moments, his experiencing is "ahead of his concepts." It "guides" his concepts. He forms concepts and "checks them against" his directly felt meaning and, on this basis, decides their correctness.
8 U4 N; ^1 O& VAs he continues to refer directly to the felt meaning (he is probably calling it "this"), he may find that his previous formulation which felt correct must be replaced by another which now feels more correct. The listener can help by pointing his words also at "this" and by helping to find words and concepts that might fit it.[11] The listener, of course, cannot judge the correctness. Not even the individual himself judges it but, we might say somewhat poetically, his direct referent does the judging. Both persons may thus be surprised by the direction which the symbolizing takes.) N5 U* \  k9 O8 |# k5 m$ t
The above has been a description of how an individual may directly refer to or "focus on" a direct referent of experiencing which, for him, constitutes the felt meaning of some topic, situation, behavior, or personality aspect.

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10. GLOBAL APPLICATION (PHASE THREE OF FOCUSING).This global way in which the process of direct reference and unfolding affects many aspects of the person is noticeable not only in his later reports of the resulting difference, but also in the moments which immediately follow the unfolding of a felt referent. The individual is flooded by many different associations, memories, situations, and circumstances, all in relation to the felt referent. Although conceptually they can be very different, they share the same felt meaning with which he has been dealing. Except for this they may concern quite different and unrelated matters.[12] "Oh, and that's also why I can't get up any enthusiasm for this-and-this." "Yes, and another thing about it is, this comes in every time somebody tells me what to do or think. I can't say, well, what I think is more important, because, see, this way of mak-ing myself wrong comes in there." "Oh, and also, back when this and this happened, I did the same thing.", y- _* Z; e# t2 n1 |
During this "wide application" period which often follows the unfolding of a felt referent, the individual may sit in silence, only occasionally voicing some of the pieces from this flood.
' x  F9 \% m6 M: y' DI realize that some of the foregoing observations have been termed by others as "insight." I believe that is a misnomer. First, the global application is in no way a figuring out, nor is it chiefly a better understanding. Rather, insight and better understanding are the results, the by-products, of this process, as a few of its very many changed aspects call attention to themselves. One can be sure that for every relation or application the individual here explicitly thinks, there are thousands which he does not think of, but which have, nevertheless, just changed. Not his thinking about the difference which the unfolding has made, but the unfolding itself, changes him in all these thousands of respects. The change occurs whether or not he thinks of any such applications, and whether or not he considers the unfolding to be a resolving. For, as I emphasized, he may well walk out saying, "I have no idea what I can do with this, or how I change it." But, it has already changed, and the great multiplicity of respects in which "it" implicitly functions have all changed.
: Y' T4 [" b# O5 `9 n& \11. REFERENT MOVEMENT (PHASE FOUR OF FOCUSING).A definite alteration or movement in the direct referent is felt. This "referent movement" often occurs after the three phases just described. When there has been direct reference, dramatic unfolding occurs, and when the flood of global application subsides, the individual finds that he now refers to a direct referent which feels different. The implicit meanings which he can symbolize from this direct reference are now quite different ones. It is a new direct reference: and so the fourphase process begins again.
" `( {% x  w0 O5 y: M  ]But focusing is not always such a neatly divisible four-phase process. As noted before, unfolding can occur with or without a noticeable flood of global application. Unfolding can also occur quite undramatically, in very small steps of successive symbolization. And, even without unfolding, even without any symbolization which feels "correct," the individual's direct reference can carry forward the feeling process and is experienced with bodily tension relief. What we are here calling the fourth phase of focusing, the referent movement, can occur at any of these times. Usually, direct reference alone does not change or move the direct referent, but does make it stronger, sharper, and more distinctly felt. It increases its intensity as a feeling and diminishes the diffuse tension, discomfort, and anxiety. However, sometimes the mere process of continuous direct reference will change or "move" the direct referent. More often, such a movement occurs after at least some unfolding and symbolizing, and especially after the felt flooding of global application.
% w% N& K+ U' c2 ZThe individual distinctly feels a change in the quality of the felt referent. It is not only a change but a directly experienced "give" or "movement" which feels right and welcome. Its tremendous importance lies in the fact that after such a referent movement (even very small), the implicit meanings are now different. The "scenery," as it were, which one confronts, changes.0 t+ _, G+ O: k( s& a
It is just this referent movement which is usually missing when one talks at oneself, when one has recited all the good reasons, considerations, and ways one should feel and would be more sensible to feel, etc. Most often, thereafter, the same unchanged felt referent is still there, and the same diffuse anxiety as well. From this lack of referent movement, one knows that nothing has really changed.
2 ^/ f' m" v4 F4 _1 n2 }5 ZConversely, after referent movement, the meanings and symbolizations one formulates are different. The relevant considerations are different. The whole scene is different. Of course, most often in one such step one does not find "solutions." The individual may say: "Well, that doesn't help me either, because now this helpless feeling, it just seems like the worst crime in the world to be helpless, weak, just let everything happen to you. I can't stand that either. I don't know what is so bad about it, I mean, if actually, in reality, I can't do anything about it anyhow." Here we see that there is no hint of anything like a solution, but the relevant surrounding considerations have now changed. What he looks at and symbolizes is different as the felt referent to which he directly refers is different.
! P: e. [* H; d! P; ]8 kReference movement gives direction to the focusing process. The individual's attention and symbolizing tends to follow that direction which produces referent movement.  D8 w  g0 z4 F  B
Without reference movement, what is said is "merely" talk, "merely" intellectualization, "merely" hair splitting, or "merely" reporting.
) |( X, M: ~5 i: `" ?: e4 `" JReference movement is the direct experience that something more than logic and verbalization has occurred. The movement can often be logically analyzed (that is to say, logical relationships can be formulated between what he said earlier and what he says now). However, such logical analysis can be made between any verbalizations, whether or not there has been reference movement. And, often, for a small bit of reference movement the logical or conceptual shift is extremely large. Even a slight reference movement can make for what conceptually looks like a totally different vantage point.0 B0 ~0 g+ h" v4 G( J9 q0 [+ ?1 l4 T
Reference movement is a change in the felt meaning which functions in symbolizing.
  {/ b( H( ]. E5 dI hope I have conveyed something of the overlapping character of what I call the four phases of focusing. To summarize them: phase one, direct reference to a felt meaning which is conceptually vague but definite as felt; phase two, unfolding and the symbolizing of some aspects; phase three, a flooding of global application; phase four, referent movement, and the process can begin again with phase one.- `( H$ ]; ]4 ?5 g9 A) P+ L- }  c5 y
These four definitions (8-11) define "focusing." [13]

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12. THE SELF-PROPELLED FEELING PROCESS.AS the individual engages in focusing, and as referent movement occurs, he finds himself pulled along in a direction he neither chose nor predicted. There is a very strong impelling force exerted by the direct referent just then felt. The individual may "get off the track," "talk about something else," or put up with considerable distracting comments and useless deductions by his listener; and still the given felt, direct referent remains strikingly as the "next thing" with which he must deal.
9 b6 T1 e& S/ Z, m; ^If the listener's responsiveness makes it possible, the individual finds himself moving from one referent movement and unfolding to another and another.Each time the inward scene changes, new felt meanings are there for him. The cycles of the four phases set into motion an overall feeling process. This feeling process has a very striking, concretely felt, self-propelled quality.5 q6 O8 i4 B, W; y3 h2 p* z
As a psychotherapist I have learned that I must depend on this self-propelled feeling process in the client. This is an important principle, because I have the power to distract him. When I do so (by too many explanations or insights of my own into what he says), then this feeling process does not occur. On the other hand, I have also learned that my questions and self-expressions can be useful, provided I always intend what I say to refer to the individual's felt referent and I show that I would like him to continue to focus on it.
4 b( u; ~8 w, ^- o( `% q: w! B. bIn order to permit the feeling process to arise, we must sometimes remain silent, at least for some brief periods. If either he or I talk all the time, little direct reference can take place. Therefore, when he has stopped talking and I have stopped responding, I am glad if there is a little silence in which he can feel the meaning of what we have been saying. I am especially glad if the next thing he then says follows not simply and logically from what we have said, but shows that he has been immersed in something felt. In this way I can notice that a felt referent has provided the transition from what he did say to what he now says. This "descent" into himself, this focusing, and the overall feeling process which arises, give verbalization to the underlying flow of events of personality change. This self-propelled feeling process is the essential motor of personality change.
# n  q$ u0 ^$ `  V# mOnce this feeling process has arisen, it continues even between the times the individual engages in the four-phase focusing process I have outlined. Thus, during the several days between two psychotherapy hours, the client may find important thoughts, feelings, memories, and insights "coming" to him. He may find a generalized "stirring," an inward "eventfulness," even without a specific symbolized content. Thus the overall feeling process comes to be self-propelled and broader than just the four phases of focusing I have described.
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The Role of the Personal Relationship-How Another Person's Responses Affect the Individual's Experiencing, and How Personality "Contents" Are Inherently Changeable TherebyWe tend to be so concerned with content (symbolized meanings) that we sometimes discuss psychological questions as if personality were nothing but contents. We forget the obvious differences which exist not only in what an individual's experience is at a given moment, but also in how he experiences. Thus we ask a question such as this: What difference does the personal relationship make, since the individual can think and feel the same contents when he is alone as he can when he talks to another person?
7 D$ w# F' K$ f' L- K8 C& }Often a psychotherapist (or any listener who wants to be helpful) will feel that he must "do something," "add something," bring in some new content or insight, so that he will be helpful and make a difference.- k+ ~7 w$ }. Q9 ~+ I* D; R
Yet, there is already all the difference between how one thinks and feels alone and how one thinks and feels with another person. The conceptual content may (for a time) be the same as the individual can think and feel by himself; but, the manner of experiencing will be totally different. Consider, for example, the type of listener who interrupts with his own concerns and is inclined to be annoyed and critical long before he understands what is said. With him, my manner of experiencing will be quite constricted. I will think of less and feel less than I do when I am alone. I will tend to say what I must in round, general, swiftly finished terms. I will not tend to feel deeply, or intensely, or richly. Certain things will never occur to me when I am with him or, if they do occur to me, I will save them for the time when I am alone, and can feel them through without the constricting effects of his responses. We all know this difference between the manner of our experiencing with certain persons as compared with when we are alone., P1 v7 }/ J; l+ R, H
Similarly, there are others (we are fortunate to know one) with whom we feel more intensely and freely whatever we feel, We think of more things, we have the patience and the ability to go more deeply into the details, we bear better our own inward strain when we are speaking to this person. If we are sad and dry-eyed alone, then with this person we cry. If we are stopped by our guilt, shame, and anxiety, then with this person we come to life again, inwardly, as being more than these emotions. If we have showered disgust and annoyance on ourselves to the point of becoming silent and deadened inside, then with this person we "come alive" again. As we tell this person some old, familiar, many times repeated story, we find it richer and freshly meaningful, and we may not get all the way through it for the many facets of personal meaning which now unfold.
& Z$ S, r7 E. T# p5 dHow shall we theoretically explain these differences in the manner in which we experience in different relationships and alone?

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13. MANNER OF EXPERIENCING.Whatever the content which we are said to experience, there is also the manner in which we experience. Few terms in our formal psychological language denote differences in manner of experiencing. Let us, therefore, define some more terms. (These terms overlap, so that fully explicating one of them would give us the others.)
/ w' A, t- N3 g) g' d) iImmediacy of Experiencing. Immediacy can be contrasted with disassociation or postponement of affect. Descriptive and poetic terms are usually invented by individuals to describe immediacy and its opposites: "I do everything right, but I'm not in it"; or "I am a spectator of my own behavior"; or "What it means to me so occupies me that I don't feel what is going on at all"; "Life is going on all right, but I'm in some back room. I merely hear about it, I'm not living it."
( G3 _/ ?7 R+ N0 r/ SPresentness. Am I reacting to the present situation? Am I feeling a now, or is the present situation merely an occasion, a cue for a familiar, repetitious, structured pattern of feeling?4 y. x5 I0 l2 S% I
Richness of Fresh Detail. Any moment's experience has a host of fresh details that I experience implicitly, some of which I could symbolize and differentiate. In contrast, the structured feeling pattern consists of only a few emotions and meanings. Sometimes, however, I have none of the richness of the present, only the same old, stale feeling pattern. In such instances psychologists are inclined to notice chiefly the content of the stale pattern. We say: "This is a protesting reaction against authority," or "this is a need to dominate," or a "partial" infantile s-e-x drive such as "voyeurism," or "exhibitionism," or a "passive-aggressive need." We tend to neglect the fact that such feeling patterns are also different in manner from an immediate, present, and richly detailed experiencing. It is not only that I react poorly to authority. Rather, I react this way to every person whom I perceive as an authority. And, more important, I react only to his being an authority, not to him as a person, and to the very many present facets of him and our situation which are different from any other situation. The "authority pattern," or any similar pattern, is really only a bare outline. My experiencing is structure-bound in manner, when I experience only this bare outline and feel only this bare set of emotions, lacking the myriad of fresh detail of the present. I might resent my boss's behaviors even if my manner of experiencing were optimal. Too much time and attention is wasted in deciding whether my reaction to him is to be blamed on me or on him. It does not matter. What does matter is the manner of my experiencing. No matter how obnoxious he may really be, if my experiencing is structure bound, I do not even experience his obnoxiousness except as mere cues for the experience of my old bare structure.( }9 N$ l7 A5 }# u" x
Frozen Wholes. We often speak of contents or "experiences" as if they were set, shaped units with their own set structure. But this is the case only to the extent that my experiencing is structure bound in its manner. For example, when I listen as you tell me something of your feelings I may occasionally think of my own experiences. I need the feelings and meanings of my own experiences in order to understand yours. However, if I must keep thinking of my experiences explicitly as such, then I cannot grasp the meanings yours have to you. I will then insist that your experiences are the same as mine (or, if I am wise, I will know that I am not understanding you). Unless my experiences implicitly function so that I can newly understand you, I cannot really understand you at all. Insofar as my experiencing is structure bound, it does not implicitly function. It is not "seamlessly" felt by me with its thousands of implicit aspects functioning so that I arrive at some fresh meaning, something you are trying to convey to me. Rather, in this regard, my experience is a "frozen whole" and will not give up its structure. Whatever requires the implicit function of experiencing in these regards makes me feel my whole frozen structure and nothing new.$ H# w3 X# l1 N, M% [4 V
Repetitive versus Modifiable. Since within the bare structured frozen whole experiencing does not function in interaction with present detail, the structure is not modified by the present. Hence, it remains the same, it repeats itself in many situations without ever changing. So long as the manner of experiencing remains structure bound, the structures themselves are not  modifiable by present occurrences.  |5 `& L9 @: T& x. k6 ]
Optimal Implicit Functioning. It is clear from the above that, to the extent the manner of experiencing is structure bound, the implicit functioning of experiencing cannot occur. Instead of the many, many implicit meanings of experiencing which must interact with present detail to interpret and react, the individual has a structured feeling pattern.
! r6 T( R4 K- b  a( Q( X+ K/ oThese terms define manner of experiencing.
( j  ?9 x# N8 _' j4 D14. IN PROCESS VERSUS STRUCTURE BOUND.Experiencing is always in process and always functions implicitly. The respects in which it is structure bound are not experiencing. The conceptual content in an abstract way can appear to be the same with different manners of experiencing. However, in the structure-bound manner the experiencing process is, in given respects, missing. By "missing" we mean that from an external viewpoint we may notice that the implicit functioning of experiencing ought to be there, but there is only the process-skipping structure, and the experiencing surrounding it and leading up to it. Thus we say that structure-bound aspects are not in process.